


All That We See or Seem

by velvetcadence



Category: Adventure Time, Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Abel as Prince Gumball, Acid Trippy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Cain as Marshall Lee, Coma, Lucid Dreaming, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcadence/pseuds/velvetcadence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His people are a happy kind and need only sugar and affection for their simple minds. Abel, for all that he is their Candy Prince, can only wish he had the same needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That We See or Seem

**Author's Note:**

> I'm using the genderbent versions of Princess Bubblegum and Marceline from Adventure Time, Gumball and Marshall Lee, which I totes ship. So, two birds, one stone? If you haven't seen the series, do! If the bright colors and the adorable animation doesn't win you over, the dialogue will.

Prince Gumball’s real name isn’t Gumball, not really. In his mind, it’s always been Abel, but the Candy People like something a little more familiar than exotic, so Gumball it is. It’s easy enough, to step into Gumball, to wear the sweet rubbery exterior so as to believe the lie. He’s been groomed for it since birth, and anyway, who will secure the kingdom if not for him?

Around the Vampire King, though, he’s just Abel. And that’s fine.

More than fine.

Cain’s known him longer than he’s been Prince Gumball, probably has known him before his consciousness arose like yeast in bread. He’s many of Abel’s firsts, but most of all, he was Abel’s first secret.

 _You were such a good little boy_ , Abel’s mother used to say. He remembers her with great fondness, the softness of her kisses, the sugar of her perfume. Candy People need love and squishy feelings more than food to survive. Abel is not so simple as that. He’s different. He’s smart and sees depth in things that his people normally wouldn’t. No surprise there, he’s part human.

 _You have your father’s eyes_ , She said often.  _And his brain. I expect great things from you._

The lengths they took to secure the heir. None of the Candy People dare to speak a word of it, and none of them have to. Abel remembers the grief half the time. He feels it constantly in the piece of heart he took from his mother when she died. After the funeral, he’d torn his chest open with Cain’s nails, held onto the vampire’s wrist as her heart-piece latched onto his, made it bigger, sweeter, as if it would enlarge his capacity for love.

And he knows, he knows the measure of sacrifice to make a new Candy child. His people have the most peculiar biology.

Cain had licked the wound closed afterwards, and scored new ones down Abel's throat when the prince had asked. Pink, Cain said, wasn’t as tangy as red. But he’d never complained when Abel let him bite.

Nobody has never  _not_ expected great things from Abel. He’s formed from the best of his parents’: his father’s eyes, his mother’s chin, his grandfather’s nose. And when his grandmother is gone, she’ll give him a piece of her bubblegum hair to weave into his, to remember. But his mind is his own, and for that he is grateful.

His people are a happy kind and need only sugar and affection for their simple minds. Abel, for all that he is their Candy Prince, can only wish he had the same needs.

-

Cain comes and goes as he pleases, and sometimes when he’s feeling particularly nostalgic, literally hangs about the bedroom.

“I used to watch you while you slept as a baby,” He muses, out of the blue, long bat-like toes secure on a ledge at the ceiling. “You still sleep the same way.”

“Is this relevant?” Abel rubs his eyes tiredly. He’s poring over Sprinkle Theories and calculating the speeds of pie, but he looks like he’s going a little cross-eyed.

“Nope.” Cain swings a little impatiently from his perch, his hair falling like a small black waterfall. “Just remembered is all. I could hear you, before you were born. You were crying.”

“I see.” But clearly, he doesn’t.

“I wish you’d wake up.” Cain says.

“Aren’t I awake now?”

Cain sighs. “You’ll have to return to the real world sometime, Princess. I’m tired of waiting.”

“What—what?”

“Come on, I know you can do better than that.”

Abel’s vision doubles, and before his eyes, Cain transforms. His skin loses its preternatural gray, and the vampirish glow of his eyes recedes. The other boy softens into human flesh, something half-remembered in this land. He lifts a finger to touch Cain's cheek and flinches back in surprise. Abel's hands are pale and not pink, the nails made of keratin rather than sweetened rubber. “There you go,” Cain says. “I thought you forgot.”

Forget? How do you forget what you do not know?

“Idiot,” Cain huffs fondly, thumbing the scar that Abel doesn’t remember is on his lip. “You fucking idiot.”

-

“I told you not to do it, but you did it anyway, and look where that’s gotten you.” He tells Abel’s sleeping body. “You’re dead to the world and I’m talking to your stupid carcass. Damn it, Abel.”

The walls are white, the bed is white, and the machinery that’s keeping Abel alive is white. Cain is the only spot of color in this dull, sterile place, a blot of black and red. It makes him feel like an intrusion. Abel looks like some sleeping beauty, ready to wake at the right touch. Cain isn't a prince, he knows that, and the only future he and Abel can have together is here in space where life is too short and death is a guarantee. It doesn’t stop him from brushing the hair out of Abel’s closed eyes, though. It doesn’t stop him from pressing his palm to that pallid cheek.

“Wake up, babe. It’s been a month already. Your folks are raising hell and I kind of miss the way you backtalk me.”

Cain waits for the heart monitor to stutter, for Abel to flutter those gorgeous eyes open and smile around the tube they’ve stuck down his throat, but there’s nothing.

Nothing at all.

Nothing here but a shell of a boy and the one who waits for him to wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." ~Edgar Allan Poe


End file.
